


I Come Clean

by samalander



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fandom Loves Puerto Rico, Fix-It, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Psychological Trauma, Slow Burn, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 12:30:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14355561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: First he forgets how Rhodey got hurt, and he can't seem to hold on to the explanations that are offered. But when Tony loses more and more memory, his friends call in one last favor to try to save him-- or just to let him say his goodbyes.





	I Come Clean

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nostalgicatsea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgicatsea/gifts).



> _Did I say that I need you?_  
>  _Oh, did I say that I want you?_  
>  _Oh, if I didn't I'm a fool you see_  
>  _No one knows this more than me_  
>  _And I come clean_ \- Pearl Jam, "Just Breathe"
> 
> For nostalgicatsea, who won me in Fandom Loves Puerto Rico-- thank you for your patience, and your kind words along the way. I hope this is everything you wanted it to be.

Somewhere, in a bar that is more filth than building, two men sit in a corner.

"You alright?" asks the darker man, his baseball cap pulled down tight over his eyes in an attempt to be unrecognizable, though he knows that people are still looking. People always look at him-- it's the ass, he knew. He has a great ass.

"No," says the fair man, whose beard was only enhancing his jaw line in a way that was patently unfair to mere mortals. He was the kind of guy who could never be truly incognito, a guy who could grow a beard and wear a hat and glasses and stop bathing and still be visibly attractive.

"Me neither," says the darker man, taking a deep draught of beer from the long-necked bottle.

"I wish it hadn't been this way," the blond man says, nervously peeling the label off of his bottle of beer. "I wish I could have done it without hurting anyone."

"Anyone?"

The word hangs in the air, heavy and dark and ponderous in a way that neither of them will be able to explain later.

"I never wanted to hurt anyone," the blond man says. "I just wish I could have saved Bucky without hurting Tony. I wish I could have kept the world safe without getting you thrown in jail. I wish I could have done it without hurting _anyone_."

"Yeah," says the darker man, drinking again. "If you figure out how to do that--"

"You'll be the first to know," the blond finishes his beer and stands, shrugging on a dark jacket. The other man doesn't move, waiting for his friend to clear the front door and disappear into the night before he makes his own exit.

* * *

It starts small. Tony is in the gym with Rhodey, and for a moment, just a moment, he doesn't remember the accident.

He remembers Germany, remembers confronting Steve, remembers Wanda throwing half a dozen cars at him, Sam Wilson flying at him like a missile.

And then he remembers holding Rhodey on a grassy field.

The rest is just gone.

Probably it's PTSD, he tells himself. It's not the first thing his mind has erased to protect him. Sometimes he thinks if he remembered more of his time in the cave, he wouldn't get up in the morning at all.

And he's not as young as he used to be-- not that he's losing his mind, no. He's sharp. He can do advanced calculus in his sleep, and he does. But he's pushing up on 50, and sometimes things get dropped. Maybe his parents would have forgotten things, at his age, too. If they had gotten the chance. If they hadn't been murdered.

Anyway, memories go. That's why he has FRIDAY. To keep track of things that don't matter, like appointments and birthdays and money. Things he can't be bothered with.

"Hey," Rhodey says, taking a slow step. "Stank. Where are you?"

Tony shakes his head to clear it."What?"

"You're not here," Rhodey tells him. "What are you plotting?"

"Plotting? Me? I'm innocent as Peter Parker," Tony grins, putting on his best cocky attitude. He knows Rhodey won't believe him. But that's never been the point. "Just thinking about perpetual motion. Like, if we could make an arc reactor that was so efficient that it powered itself--"

"You know," Rhodey says, rolling his eyes as he takes another aching step. "You can just say you were thinking about Steve. I'm gonna judge you, yeah, but I was gonna do that anyway."

"I wasn't," Tony bristles, offering Rhodey his hand.

Rhodey rolls his eyes, but takes the offered hand. "Really, man?"

"Really," Tony says, his heart starting to speed up a little. He thinks he's probably angry, or embarrassed at the implication. Whatever. He wasn't thinking about Rogers. He hardly ever does that.

Anymore.

* * *

"I should know this," Tony says to no one in particular, as he fiddles with the exhaust manifold on one of his boots. It's been days since he realized he doesn't remember the accident, and he's been avoiding Rhodey as best he can.

"Know what, sir?" FRIDAY's voice pipes up, her lilting accent somehow comforting. He made a good call there. Something about women with accents has always been relaxing for him.

"How did Rhodey get hurt?" he asks. It's starting to really bother him. He's been wracking his brain, but he can't seem to access the memory, and details are missing from Secretary Ross's report. Casualties are listed, but not circumstances.

FRIDAY is quiet for a very long time-- well, a very long time for a computer. If she were a person, a pause of six seconds would be nothing. But for an AI, especially one of _Tony's_ AIs, it's an eternity.

"FRIDAY," Tony says, finally. "Do you have a record of how Colonial Rhodes got injured?"

"No, sir," she says, in a tone that would be worry if she were a person. "I have a blank space in my memory banks from timestamp 13:24:39 to 13:30:04."

That's concerning, Tony thinks. FRIDAY should have a feed and log of everything that happens when he's in the Iron Man suit. She should be storing those things in hard backup and on the cloud. There should never be a gap.

"Run a diagnostic on your memory subroutines," Tony says. "And check for other gaps in suit surveillance."

"Yes, sir," FRIDAY says. "Initializing."

* * *

There are gaps. There are a lot of gaps, totalling almost five hours. And they all fall in the weeks between the announcement of the accords and the breakout at The Raft.

He backs up her memory logs to offline storage, just in case. If FRIDAY has been compromised, then Tony's whole system is in trouble. He's going to have a whole bunch of issues with his basic data security and some of the assumptions about Stark Industries and a good chunk of the federal government will need to be reexamined to exclude malicious foreign actors.

But there's not a hacker. Not one he can find. Tony spends hours with FRIDAY, testing memory retention and running commands that should go against her programming and any other thing he can think of, and the only flaws he can find anywhere are the holes in her surveillance memory. He even writes an email to Parker, asking if he has any friends who can white-hat their way into Stark Industries, with promises of immense riches and their name on a plaque if they can. He's desperate.

Tony's not even aware of how much time he's been at it until his phone rings.

"Yeah," he says, because anyone who would be calling this number knows him too well for pleasantries.

"Hi, honey," Rhodey chirps. "Staying late at the office?"

Tony rubs his eyes, which suddenly feel heavy and dry. "What?"

He can hear the shrug, the kind of physical tic that Rhodey would deny he has but he has, and they both know it. "Haven't seen you in a week," he says, slowly.

That's not right. That can't be right. "A week?" Tony says. "Huh. I guess I got-- hey, are you here?"

Rhodey laughs. "Yeah, dumbass. I'm upstairs. Physio. You know, the thing you said you'd be there for?"

Had he said that? When had he said that? It seemed like something he would say, sure, but not necessarily something that Rhodey would expect him to follow up on. This was a man who had waited hours-- multiple _hours_ \-- for Tony to get on a plane before. Why would he be expecting internal consistency now?

"Let me ask you," Tony says. "How-- how did you get hurt?"

"Don't be an asshole," Rhodey says. "Come upstairs."

* * *

Tony has to admit that the legs he built for Rhodey are not attractive. Not by his standards. He wants them to be sleeker, prettier, faster. They should have a racing stripe or something. But they're a prototype, and they work okay for now. "Hey," he says, entering the gym as Rhodey takes a few steps. "I'm here."

"Bout time," Rhodey says, but there's no malice in it, and the smile on his face is authentic. "What's so important, huh? What's her name?"

Tony grins. "FRIDAY," he says. "Hell of a woman."

"Tell me," Rhodey laughs, taking another slow step. "The accent, right?"

"The accent is good," Tony agrees, moving to support Rhodey's right arm. "How's the pain?"

There are a lot of answers to that, he thinks. The pain is probably pretty severe, but Rhodey was in the military way too long to complain about those kinds of things. He's barely said anything negative during his recovery.

"Pain is weakness leaving the body," he says, and Tony rolls his eyes.

"You sound like my gym teacher."

Rhodey laughs through gritted teeth-- there is pain there, it's on his face-- and glances up at Tony. "You went to exactly zero years of high school. How would you know what a gym teacher sounds like?"

Tony claps an offended hand over his heart. "He wounds me! This from the man who tried to make me watch all of Friday Night Lights!"

"Hey," Rhodey says, the severity of his tone belied by the fondness in his eyes. "I said you could skip season two."

Tony laughs and holds onto Rhodey as he takes his last few gruelling steps to the end of the parallel bars. It's not easy, but none of this has been. Rhodey slumps into a chair when he finishes, winded and pale. Tony grabs his water bottle and offers it wordlessly.

"Thanks," Rhodey says, taking a drink. "I thought I was done with this learning to march shit when I left basic."

"How did you get hurt?" Tony says, which isn't what he meant to say. He meant to make a joke about Rhodey not walking until the Air Force taught him how, intended to stroll right through that open door and grab the low hanging fruit.

Rhodey is quiet. "It was an accident," he says, at long last.

"Right," Tony nods. "But-- fuck, I can't-- I think I forgot it. I remember you chasing the jet, and I remember after. In the field. I don't--"

"It's okay," Rhodey says, which clues Tony into how desperate his voice must sound, how exhausted and frantic and scared. "We were chasing Rogers and Barnes in the Quinjet, and Wilson was giving chase. I told Vision to shoot out Wilson's jets, but Wilson moved, and Vision hit me. I fell. It was an accident. It wasn't your fault."

Tony hears the words, but he can't seem to get a grip on them. As soon as a sentence ends, it seems to evaporate. The ideas are slippery. "We were chasing--" he says, and shakes his head as if he can trick the words into adhering to his memory. "Got it, yeah. Okay."

Rhodey's forehead is creased, his brow downright furrowed. "Tony, are you okay?"

The smile is weak and the shrug is unconvincing, but Tony offers them anyway. "Get up," he says. "Let's do some more walking."

And, bless his damn heart, Rhodey doesn't push it.

* * *

The idea of losing his mind is big, and it's scary, and if Tony is being totally honest, it hurts. So he does what he does with everything that is big and scary and painful and can't be solved with an equation or a box of scraps; he ignores it and hopes it'll go away.

Tony throws himself into work, into Rhodey's rehab, into dodging Secretary Ross's increasingly frequent calls demanding that he do something to help him hunt down Barton and Wanda and Lang and Wilson. He makes a breakthrough with repulsor technology, he goes to MIT to see the student projects, he confirms with Parker's nerdling friends that FRIDAY is impossible to compromise and writes the missing memory segments off to the kind of code error that can only be understood if you're actually the code. It's all very engrossing and distracting.

Until one day he looks up from his work and realizes he can't remember why he was in Siberia. He remembers visiting the raft, talking to Wilson and Barton, and he remembers learning about Steve's lies. But he can't remember what took them there.

It's too much. He barely thinks as he picks up his phone and punches up the contacts.

"Hello?" her voice is soft and musical, and Tony doesn't hear it often enough. He should call more.

"Hi, Pepper," he says.

"Tony," she replies, and there's a coldness in her voice that grips his heart. Right. That's why he doesn't call. "What do you need?"

He closes his eyes. This was a bad idea. "I know we're-- in detente," he says. "But I think I'm losing my mind."

Her silence is the loudest thing Tony has ever heard, and he knows that she's trying not to say something like _You just figured that out?_

"What's happening?" she says, finally.

"I can't remember things," he says, pinching his nose. "I'm forgetting things."

"Like what?" she asks, her voice softening slightly.

"Like Rhodey's accident," he says. "Like fighting with Steve."

"But you remember asking me--"

"I do," Tony says. "And I remember you saying no."

Pepper makes a soft noise that might be pity and might be regret. "What do you need?"

"I don't know," he says, feeling pathetic and young. "I just needed to hear your voice. I miss talking to you."

She's quiet again, and Tony wonders if he's stepped over some boundary that he couldn't see. "Have you seen a doctor?" she asks, after a long moment. "A real doctor, with a medical degree and a stethoscope, not just DUM-E with a tricorder or whatever."

"No," he says. "Tricorders aren't real."

"Tony," her voice is a warning and it makes his heart hurt. "Please go see a doctor. The amount of time you spend in a tin can getting thrown around-- go get an MRI and a CAT scan and whatever else they tell you. Please."

He doesn't want to. Last time he had to deal with a brain doctor, it was a deranged lunatic who kidnapped his girlfriend and the president and tried to kill them all.

"Okay," he says. "Thanks, Pepper."

"You can call me," she says, like a foot in the door. "If you actually-- if you really need me, okay? You can call me. I'll be there."

"Okay," he says again, and he hangs up the phone.

* * *

"Tell me again," Tony says, helping Rhodey into the hot tub.

"I told Vision to shoot Wilson--" Rhodey begins, but Tony cuts him off.

"You told Vision to do what?"

Rhodey sighs and tilts his head back as the hot water works on his aching muscles. "This isn't getting us anywhere."

Tony feels his heart speed up, thumping in his chest like an unbalanced flywheel. "Again," he says.

"No," Rhodey snaps. "Fuck off."

On some level, Tony knows he's being unreasonable. It's not fair, he knows, to demand that Rhodey relive his accident over and over when it isn't helping, but he's scared, and nervous, and he doesn't know what else to do.

"Please," he says softly, his voice cracking on the word.

"No," Rhodey says, his knuckles going white where he's gripping the edge of the pool. "I already have to do this in therapy. I don't want to do it with you."

"It's like mesh," Tony says softly. "Like I hear the words you say, but they won't stick, they just slide through. I know them all, but when you put them in that order--"

His breath is coming faster now, and his chest is starting to hurt. He knows this feeling, he remembers it. This is the feeling of falling out of space after aiming the missile at the Chitauri ship, the feeling of his house crumbling under his feet, the feeling of waking up strapped to a car battery.

This is panic, and it's cold and it's hot and Tony can't fucking _breathe_.

"Tell me," he demands, trying to get a hold of anything that will buoy him to reality.

Rhodey reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder. Tony sees his friend's mouth move, watches it form words, but he can't even hear them now, the sounds too opaque to register. Tony shakes his head. "I-- I can't--"

"Hey," Rhodey says loudly, snapping through the haze. "Tony. You're okay, you're fine." His hand is warm on Tony's knee.

"I'm not," Tony says, miserably. "I'm fucking dying."

"Not allowed," Rhodey says, his voice military-sharp. "Breathe. Take some deep breaths, and close your eyes, and think about your happy place."

"Fuck off," Tony says, though he closes his eyes and takes a few stuttering breaths. "I don't have a happy place."

"Sure you do," Rhodey says. "You fuck robots or something, right? Make sweet, sweet love to arc reactors and have DUM-E give you a reach around?"

Tony cracks open one eye and peers at Rhodey. "Really? We're being funny now? Is that what we're doing?"

Rhodey shrugs. "You're not, but I'm hilarious."

Tony smiles despite himself. "I hate you."

"I know," Rodey says, smiling warmly. "I hate you too. You okay?"

"No," Tony says. "I think I'm having a panic attack."

"Yeah, no shit," Rhodey says, reaching out for Tony's hand. "Help me out of here, we need to go somewhere with like, soft chairs and padded walls where you can lie down."

"You don't have to come," Tony offers feebly, holding out a hand to help Rhodey up.

"Like hell I don't," Rhodey says. "Last time I left you alone to deal with your emotions you built a robot that tried to destroy the world. Time before that, you got your whole house blown up. You and emotions are not a healthy combination."

Tony helps Rhodey up and grabs him a towel from the rack. He's not entirely sure who's leaning on who as they head into the locker room to get Rhodey some pants, but he's also not totally sure it matters.

* * *

Tony doesn’t ask again, decides that maybe his brain is trying to tell him something by refusing to deal with his involvement with Rhodey’s accident. Maybe it’s better that way, to not know how you hurt someone who’s forgiven you.

He doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.

The circumstances surrounding Siberia are still a mystery as well, and Tony wishes he could ask Steve—or Sam or Clint or even fucking Barnes—what was there besides the video. Of course he hadn’t told anyone, but part of him thinks it wouldn’t matter if he had, that the story would slide through the gaping holes in his mind and land him right back where he was, just more frustrated.

And he doesn’t notice, of course, when he forgets more. When the explosion at the UN fades and the fight with Barnes in Berlin turns muddy and the visit to the raft slips into obscurity, Tony keeps going through his days, keeps talking to Parker and works on shutting down Avengers Tower and lives his life as best he can. It’s easy to forget, it always is. If you don’t know what you’ve forgotten, how can it matter?

He’s in his lab working on reverse engineering the technology that Toomes stole and made into his wings—they’d be good for Wilson, if he ever comes back, or for any other team member who decided they wanted to fly but couldn’t already—when FRIDAY pipes up.

“Sir,” she says. “I have an alert for you.”

“Go ahead,” Tony grunts around the screwdriver in his mouth. (He should make a sonic screwdriver, he thinks, something that requires less turning overall. Only his’ll work on everything, none of that “no wood” bullshit that the Doctor has to deal with.)

“My memory has been compromised,” she says.

“I know,” Tony bites out, but he feels the fear all the same. “New hole?”

“Yes sir,” she nods.

Tony moves to the computer, tapping a few keys to pull out FRIDAY’s ongoing diagnostic. “What’s missing?”

It’s a stupid question; how can anyone know what they don’t remember? But she gives him a time code, and he scans it. Dread pools like mercury in his stomach as he fumbles in a drawer for the backup he made when he first discovered the memory errors.

“Anything else?” he asks, plugging the external drive into a port.

“Several video files seem to be corrupted beyond repair,” she says. “I can’t read them, and their names have been scrambled.”

“Encrypted?” Tony asks, scanning the archived memory dump.

“No, sir,” she says. “Not with any type of encryption that I have in my protocols.”

The hole is in the offline memory, as well, the same time codes a blank static that spreads the chill out from Tony’s stomach and settles it into his bones. “Any sign of forced entry?” he asks. “Any idea why this happened?”

FRIDAY answers in the negative, because of course she does. There are a few options here that Tony can see, a few reasons to believe that this is an error in the diagnostic instead of the memory. But at the same time, he’s not sure it actually matters. Nothing really matters.

“FRIDAY,” Tony says. “Scan the external media. Are there any files there that might be your missing videos?”

The delay is long, as FRIDAY scans through what amounts to days and days of data. “Yes sir,” she says at long last.

“Play the video,” Tony says, the dread creeping into his veins.

It’s a dark night, it’s an abandoned highway. It’s a car crash. And then things happen; a man steps into the frame and kills the people in the car before robbing them.

“What is this?” Tony asks. “Why was it in your memory?”

“I don’t know, sir,” FRIDAY says. “I have no record of the video. The man on the motorcycle is a 96% facial match for James Barnes, but I have no biometric markers that appear to correspond to the other people.”

Tony shakes his head. He feels angry, suddenly furious. It’s the video. The video inspires rage in him, though he has no idea why it should. He knows the Winter Soldier killed people. The Winter Soldier killed Nick Fury, at least for a little while. But these people are strangers, and there’s no reason for Tony to be this enraged by their deaths.

* * *

He sends the video to Pepper, who shows up at the compound the next day. Her face terrifies him as she sits him down on the couch and tries to explain what the video is. He hears her, he feels the angry spike in his emotions, and has no idea why.

“Have you heard from Steve lately?” he asks, and her face sinks further.

She makes a few calls, and a few hours later, Tony finds himself in a hospital, the thin blue gown covering him as technicians slide him into a metal tube.

“Stay still, Mister Stark,” a tinny voice tells him, and the scan begins.

* * *

They make a list of all the things it could be.

He comes back negative for palladium poisoning, and with the arc reactor gone it's unlikely that badassium-- or as the suits named it, Starkin-45-- would be causing any latent side effects. The Extremis should have taken care of all of that.

They rule out an autoimmune disorder caused by the intense healing of Extremis, as well. It was a good idea, but all Extremis ever did was make people catch on fire and blow up, it never seemed to do much in the way of eating their brains.

He doesn't have enough general knowledge or reason loss for it to be dementia, though the idea of flying into rages and shitting himself is looking more and more appealing by the day. He thinks that if this goes on much longer, he'll try it, just to give them an answer. 

The leading theory appears to be Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, but there's still not a great test to figure out if that's the case.

"Makes sense," Tony sniffs, when he finally tells Rhodey. "Fucking suit. Throwing my brain around in there so much it should be soup now. I take more hits than a damned wide receiver."

"Okay," Rhodey says, his tone deliberately cheery. "I'm impressed that you could name a football position that isn't quarterback, but since when do you make sports references?"

"Since athletes with nine hundred head injuries have been killing their families and themselves all up and down the news," Tony huffs. "I should never have tested the suit on myself. I should have gotten better inertial dampeners in the helmet."

"It's not your fault," Rhodey says. 

"Fuck you, yes it is," Tony snaps. "It's exactly my fault and buddy, you'd better watch out cause you've been flying around in little brother for ages now, and you could be next."

Rhodey goes ashen, but doesn't lose his smile. "You think I have enough of a brain to lose? Come on, man. You know me better."

Tony tries to smile but all he can do is grip Rhodey's hand tightly. "Don't let me hurt you, okay?" he breathes, trying to convey how fucking scary it is to be faced with the idea of losing control of himself forever. "Don't let me hurt _anyone_. If I come at you, take me down. Promise?"

Rhodey squeezes his hand. "It's not gonna happen."

"Promise," Tony insists.

"Okay, yeah. Jeez. I promise. You try to kill me, I'll give you a new head injury and sit on you until you stop."

Tony actually does smile at that. "And tell the others. Pepper, and Steve. Tell them not to let me hurt them, okay?"

Rhodey's smile doesn't reach his eyes, which seems more normal than not these days, but he nods all the same.

"I promise."

* * *

Rhodey knows where the little cellphone is, tucked into a safe in Tony’s office at the compound. He flips it open carefully, powers it on, and dials the only number in the memory.

“Tony?” the voice on the other end says. “You okay?”

“It’s Rhodes,” Rhodey says. “And no, he’s not.”

Steve’s intake of breath is sharp, almost panicked. “What happened?”

“Well,” Rhodey says. “He appears to have forgotten just about everything that happened around the Accords. He doesn’t know you two fought, he doesn’t know that Clint and Sam and the others were in the raft, and he doesn’t know you fucking lied to him about your buddy murdering his parents.”

“Hey,” Steve snaps, his voice a mix between anger and fear. "I didn't--"

“He wants to see you,” Rhodey says, hoping Steve can hear what a terrible idea that is. A silence drifts across the line, Steve’s breathing coming quickly as Rodey imagines he’s doing the calculus of this being a trap.

“I’m kind of a fugitive,” Steve says at long last.

“And Tony might be kind of dying,” Rhodey says, annoyed. “I’ll arrange it.”

“He’s dying? Steve’s voice cracks.

Rhodey’s nerves are fraying a little, getting tired of Rogers’ shit. “We don’t know,” he snarls. “We don’t know fucking anything. We know he’s forgetting and the doctors can’t find anything wrong with his brain. There’s no plaque, it’s not early-onset dementia or whatever. He’s just—forgetting.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “Yeah. I’m coming.”

* * *

Being in the hospital sucks.

It sucked when Tony was a kid and broke his arm, it sucked when he had his appendix out, and it sucks now that his brain appears to be on the fritz. It smells wrong, he decides, like antiseptic and gauze and fear. He hates feeling helpless, useless, and sick. There’s nothing he can do from his bed, nothing he can do to fix himself.

They won’t even give him what he needs to build himself a memory bank.

Though, according to Rhodey, the external memory that Tony created to back FRIDAY up has started to develop new holes, so maybe a synthetic neural network to replace his own brain wouldn’t help.

And last time he tried to do anything like putting a neural network into a body, it turned out really shitty for a non-zero chunk of the population. He can’t imagine anything quite as awful as turning himself into an Ultron.

And the worst part is that he doesn’t even feel sick. He’s not lethargic or stuffed up or achy, any of the things he’d normally associate with being sick. He just feels bored.

“Knock knock,” her voice is a faux-cheery as Pepper leads Rhodey into the room. “Look who put on his legs to come and see you!”

“Hey,” Tony smiles. “Hi. Am I going home?”

Pepper’s eyes look sad as she exchanges a look with Rhodey. “Not yet, Stank,” Rhodey says, limping to one of the ugly plastic molded chairs that lines the wall of Tony’s room. “They still don’t know what’s wrong with you. I mean, you know. Past the obvious.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Then to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“We missed you,” Pepper says, sitting on the edge of his bed. “No one has blown themselves up for literal days.”

“You wanna hook me up to oxygen and get me a cigar?” Tony asks, though he doesn’t feel as excited to see them as they are to see him.

“Yes,” Rhodey says, grinning.

“No,” Pepper says, at the same time. “But we did bring you a present.”

She reaches into her bag and pulls out some papers, which she hands to Tony. He takes them gingerly an reads the first line.

_May 5, 2017: General Ross presents the Sokovia Accords to the team at the Avengers compound in upstate New York._

“What is this?” Tony asks, looking up from the papers.

Neither of them speaks for a moment, as if neither one wants to be the one to tell him. Finally, Rhodey pipes up. “We had FRIDAY write a history of the Sokovia accords, and the events leading to the—the things you don’t remember. I wanna see if you can fill in any of the blanks in her story, or if there’s something that you can’t understand in there.”

Tony nods, accepting a pen from Pepper and reading further in the document.

* * *

The narrative is complete, as far as Tony can tell. The presentation of the accords, the death of Peggy Carter, the bombing of the UN by an unknown assailant, time with Rogers and Wilson and Romanov in Berlin, talking to Peter Parker in New York, and finding Rogers and Barnes in Siberia. That’s it. Nothing else to know about.

He can tell by the looks on his friend’s faces that he’s not right, that he’s forgetting something, but other than the blank feeling of fear and apprehension that seems to live in every cell of his being these days, Tony can't muster up much of a care about any of it.

He knows he should, but the fear is exhausting and the idea of keeping it going, of allowing himself to be that scared for the rest of his life-- which may, certainly, become a very short time if his brain is turning to soup-- is just too much. He can't do it. He won't.

* * *

James Rhodes meets the plane outside the Avengers Complex, his metal legs feeling odd and bulky under him.

It took some strings being pulled, and it took an extraordinary amount of trust on both sides. But when the day and the time come, Steve Rogers disembarks from the stolen quinjet, alone.

He looks rough-- he's got a beard now, a dark shadow that runs along his jaw, and bags under his eyes that make him look old and beaten. It's easy to forget, sometimes, that Rogers isn't even thirty. He's a baby, really. Young and just about as stupid as the rest of them. But he carried the Avengers for years, and he carried the hurt and the fear and the loss that he never showed them.

In the past, Rhodey would have said they were friends, he would have said he respected Rogers. But he isn't so sure, anymore, that they can be called anything more than former coworkers.

"Steve," he says, by way of greeting.

"Rhodes," Rogers nods. "How are you?"

Rhodey shrugs. "Standing," he says, leaving the _no thanks to you and your pals_ hanging in the air where it belongs, heavy and dark between them.

"How is he?" Steve asks, his brow furrowing.

"Not great," Rhodey says, turning to walk to the car that's waiting. "Come on. He's been asking for you."

* * *

Steve doesn't have strong feelings about hospitals, not as they are now. The hospitals of the 1930s, the ones he remembers from being a kid, those were terrors. But today's hospitals aren't even that same sterile white anymore, and the nurses don't wear the crisp uniforms that used to haunt his dreams when he was a sick little boy. Today's hospitals are bright, they have color and sound, and somehow they've managed to get rid of the smell of death all together.

It would be creepy if Steve allowed himself to think about it too hard, which he doesn't.

Tony is in a big, private room-- the kind of healthcare you can only get when your last name is Stark, Steve thinks. The kind of amenities you're afforded when your name is on a wing of the hospital.

There's a nurse fussing over Tony when Steve enters, trailing behind Rhodey like a naughty schoolboy. She's berating him for something, some rule he broke. Steve doesn't hear the words at all. His eyes are glued to Tony's face, which is gaunt and drawn, his age writ large in a way that it never has been. His goatee is unkempt and his eyes are dark with bags. He's been through hell. They've both been through hell.

"Tony," Rhodey says, as the nurse leaves, carrying a tray and some blood with her. "Tony, Steve is here."

The change in Tony's face is stunning. He lights up like an arc reactor, practically glowing as he scans Steve's face.

"You grew a beard," Tony says.

"You too," Steve says, trying to tamp down the emotion that he can hear creeping into his voice. "How are you?"

Tony shrugs. "I'm in a hospital," he says. "They say I'm forgetting things, but I don't know exactly what."

Rhodes steps back. "I'll be outside, okay?"

Steve nods, and pulls up a chair next to Tony's bed, his heart feeling heavy as the door clicks closed and they're alone.

For a long time, neither man speaks. Steve doesn't know quite what he wants to say, how to say anything to Tony right now. He'd thought about it on the plane-- had been mulling over how this moment would go since the phone first rang. But standing here, he's at a loss. He owes Tony something, he thinks. He owes him a lot.

"I'm sorry," he says at long last.

"For what?"

"All of it," Steve says. "But mostly-- mostly I didn't want to hurt you."

Tony blinks at him. "Steve," he says, with a grin that could almost be called shy. "You've never hurt me."

"Never?" Steve asks.

The air is thick, and Steve can't breathe as he waits for the answer he fears is coming.

"Never," Tony shrugs. "Not that I can-- That I---" his voice breaks and he closes his eyes tightly, as though wincing away from the reality of what he wants to say.

"Not that you can remember," Steve supplies softly. 

"No," Tony agrees.

Steve stands, pacing to the window. It's a pretty campus, he thinks. A pretty place to die.

"Do you-- do you remember the first time we met?" he asks.

"In Berlin, yeah," Tony nods. "You were getting your ass handed to you by Loki."

"And after that? On the helicarrier?"

Tony thinks for a moment, as though he has to strain to pull up memories from that long ago. "What are you looking for?" he asks, when he's been silent for a long time.

"You remember--" Steve smiles sadly and turns back to look at Tony again. "Do you remember fighting with me? About you being a big man in a suit of armor? And me being a lab experiment?"

The confusion on Tony's face is enough. He doesn't need to say it, Steve knows. He doesn't remember. He doesn't remember any of it. Just the good times. Which is a damn shame, because in retrospect some of the ugly things they'd said that day led to the shape of their friendship.

Something in Tony seems to snap, something that was calm suddenly erupts and a styrofoam cup of water goes clattering to the floor, followed by the few things Tony can reach as he struggles to get himself up out of the bed.

"Hey," Steve reaches out, crosses the room to stop the fit. "Tony, hey. Stop."

"Why me?" Tony shouts, batting at Steve's restraining hands. "Why this? Take my heart, fine. I wasn't using it. Take my suits, fine. I'll make more. But my brain? My goddamned memory? What am I without my brain?"

Steve doesn't respond, he just holds on and waits for Tony to stop fighting him. The door creaks open, but Steve waves Rhodes away as Tony finally falls back, tears starting to escape his eyes and slide slowly down his cheeks.

"What am I," Tony asks again, "without my brain?"

"You're Tony goddamn Stark," Steve tells him, meeting his eyes with as much intensity as he can. "You're a hero. You've saved the world more than once. You're generous; you give to charity and you housed a bunch of heroes in a compound upstate that must have cost you millions of dollars. You don't want anyone to know it, but you're good," Steve smiles, reaching out to wipe a tear away. "You regret the bad stuff you do, and you try to fix it. You regret the good stuff, too, but the bad stuff is the stuff that weighs, right?"

Tony snorts softly, the edge of a laugh amidst his tears. "I regret everything," he whispers.

"Me too," Steve says, taking his hand and sitting back in the chair. "Me too."

* * *

The doctors don't have a lot to tell Steve; nothing they haven't told Rhodey or Tony himself, so he spends most of his time sitting quietly in Tony's room, trying to find the words to say that will make things better, trying to find a way to apologize for everything and nothing all at once.

It doesn't come.

Tony rages and screams, he weeps and clings. Sometimes he demands to leave and go home, other times he just lies there staring at the ceiling, like he's waiting for someone to make it end.

It makes Steve ache, it makes him burn. He hasn't felt this useless since he left Bucky in Wakanda, iced and sleeping. Another friend he couldn't help. Another person he hurt by letting them believe in him.

"I'm sorry," he says, when he's been there a week and Tony is in one of his catatonic states.

He's said it before. He's tried to apologize for any number of things, but most of the time Steve can't even find the right words to say what he's sorry for, and it all feels futile.

"I don't want to die," Tony replies. "And I think I am. Dying."

"Nah," Steve shrugs, like he has any levity to give the moment. "It's just-- if only we could see inside your brain, you know? Like, not with machines, but see the thoughts. See what's actually in there."

Tony sits bolt upright, his sudden burst of energy causing Steve to nearly jump out of his skin.

"You're a fucking genius," Tony says as he reaches for his phone, and Steve is confused, but he doesn't argue.

* * *

No matter how many times Steve has stood in a room with Vision-- and it's been a fair few, at this point-- he's always unnerved.

Maybe it's the red skin, or the yellow gem in his forehead. Maybe it's the speech pattern, somehow stilted and formal while still being familiar and joking. Maybe it's his weird propensity for walking through walls instead of using doors. Whatever it is, Steve finds Vision downright strange.

And seeing him in the hospital is no different. Vision doesn't belong here. Or maybe he does; maybe it's Steve who doesn't fit into the beige-blue walls and the eerily silent tiled hallways. Maybe he doesn't belong at Tony's bedside. But something about Vision in the room feels strange.

Tony has been practically vibrating with excitement since the thought came to him, since Steve said whatever it was that caused him to realize that they did, in fact, know someone who could look into another's mind. Actually, they know two people, but one of them is probably still upset about having been thrown into an undersea jail and so Tony opts not to call her. Which is probably for the best.

It's almost refreshing to see Tony this way; to see him alive and excited for something rather than cowering in bed or screaming his frustrating to the indifferent buzzing fluorescent lights. But something waits on the edge of the excitement-- some kind of dread in all of them that whispers _what if this fails, too_. Steve refuses to give in to it.

Vision doesn't waste time on platitudes, on confirming things. He and Tony spoke on the phone, and Tony told him what he wanted-- "Look into my head," he said. "Read my thoughts, find my memories. And give them back."

Steve meets Tony's eyes for a brief moment before Vision places his hand on Tony's forehead. At first nothing happens, and the whole room is holding their breath-- Tony called in Rhodey and Pepper, just in case. Pepper couldn't make it, stuck overseas on some kind of urgent business, but the room still feels overstuffed and claustrophobic with four people in it.

Then the gem in Vision's forehead begins to glow. Softly at first, but the light crescendos into a blazing flare that whites out Steve's sight. Someone shouts, maybe in pain. 

And then it's over. Vision is standing next to Tony, whose eyes are screwed closed, and the room looks exactly like it did before. Nothing has changed.

"Which one of you yelled?" Tony asks, his voice creaky.

"You did," Rhodey tells him, softly.

Tony just nods. "Thought so. Vision?"

Vision's skin seems pale, if that's even possible. Like it's pinkish, maybe, or the metal has lost its lustre. "I saw--" Steve wonders for a moment if it's possible for Vision to be unnerved, or if perhaps he's just not sure how to tell them something. No one moves, no one seems to breathe, as they wait for Vision to tell them what he saw.

"There are black bars over your memories," Vision says at long last. "And they all have words printed on them."

"Words?" Tony asks, his brow furrowed in confusion. "What words?"

Vision meets Steve's gaze when he speaks, and Steve feels his stomach turn as he hears them.

"It says," Vision says, not moving his gaze, "I just wish I could have saved Bucky without hurting Tony."

* * *

It's clear to everyone in the room whose words are written across Tony's memory. It's clear and it's terrifying. Even Vision looks scared.

Rhodey rounds on Steve, fury in his face and eyes, his fists balled at his sides. It would be amazing how well he moves with his new legs if Steve wasn't so busy being horrified. "You," Rhodey growls. "You did this."

Steve hold up his palms, defensive and defenseless. "I-- I didn't. I didn't mean to."

"That's just it," Rhodey snaps. "You never _mean to_. You just-- you--"

"Stop."

The voice that cuts across the room is tired, almost old.

"You don't get to be mad about this," Tony says. "You don't get to-- to be mad _for_ me."

Rhodey blinks and takes a step back. "What the hell, Stark?"

Tony pulls himself to standing, and it takes more effort than Steve thinks it should. He's sick in the brain, not the body. He shouldn't be straining to stand, to move. And yet he reaches out to take a hold of Vision's arm like he might fall over without the support.

"I want him here," Tony says. "You don't get to yell at him."

"He _did_ this," Rhodey snaps, looking between them like he can't understand what's happening. But Steve's eyes are glued on Tony's face, and he catches the blank look of confusion that crosses it in a moment.

"What are you talking about?" Tony asks.

"The bars-- the words--" Steve steps forward. "Tony, I'm causing your memory loss. Somehow."

Tony blinks. "You-- what? Say it again."

"You're forgetting things," Steve says softly, and Tony nods.

"That's what they're telling me. I don't know what I'm forgetting."

"You're forgetting all the times I ever hurt you," Steve says. "All of them."

Tony's laugh is the scariest part of a day that has been full of some weird-ass shit. "What are you talking about?"

Steve looks helplessly at Vision, who takes his turn to try and explain. "Your memory loss is caused by Captain Rogers."

Blankness. Horrifying, empty nothingness sweeps Tony's face again. "I don't understand."

"Of course you don't," Rhodey breathes, stepping in to take Tony's arm and help him sit back on the bed. "Tony-- you can't understand, cause of what's happening. Cause-- cause when some people hurt you, you can't remember it. Like a spell. Like a magic curse. But we can. We do. And we're goin to fix it."

"Magic isn't real," Tony insists, though his heart isn't in it. "Didn't I ever make you read Arthur C Clarke?"

"No," Rhodey says, and Steve is struck breathless by how much affection is in the word, how a single syllable can carry all the depth of feeling between these two men. "So you stay the fuck alive, and maybe you can make me later."

Tony smiles and snorts derisively. "Have to teach you to read first."

Rhodey forces a smile that makes Steve want to look away; he feels like he's watching something deeply intimate."Vision is going to stay with you a minute," Rhodey says, meeting Steve's eyes. "Steve and I are going to go talk, okay?"

Tony nods. "Play nice."

Steve smiles, but he knows it's exactly as forced as Rhodey's was a moment ago. "Always."

* * *

A few minutes later and a few floors below, Rhodey and Steve stare at each other in the cafeteria over cups of what might be coffee. Neither man drinks.

"How did I do this?" Steve asks, finally. "I remember saying it. I was in a bar, with Sam. After I broke them out, after we put Bucky-- after we got him to safety. I met up with Sam one last time before we both went into hiding. And I said that. It was _months_ ago."

"I don't care," Rhodey says. "It doesn't matter how you did it. It matters how we fix it."

Steve nods, finally looking down at the chipped table top between them. "Whatever he needs. Anything."

* * *

The truth about dying, Tony thinks, is that it's fucking _boring_. It takes forever, and no one wants to tell you anything while it happens. They just come in and look at you like you're pathetic and pretend they can fix it.

The days run together. He feels like Steve has been in his rooms for months, years maybe. He has no idea how much time has passed since he first found the gaps in FRIDAY's memories, since they started telling him he was forgetting things.

Sometimes someone says something that he can't understand, but it barely phases him anymore. Forgetting, not understanding, whatever. It's all become commonplace. You can get used to anything, he thinks. He got used to being an orphan. He got used to shrapnel in his heart. He got used to the people he loves leaving. He can get used to dying, too.

"Do you know who this is?" Steve asks, one day, handing Tony a picture of two people in old timey dress. 

Tony studies it for a moment. They're attractive people, that's for sure. People he should know; there's something familiar and comforting about the woman, something infuriating about the man.

"No," he says at long last. "Should I?"

"That's your dad," Steve says, pointing at the man. "And that's Peggy Carter. In Italy, when we were fighting in World War Two. Do you remember Peggy?"

"Yes," Tony says, though it's a half lie. He remembers who Peggy Carter _is_ , how she and his dad founded SHIELD. But he can't think what either of their faces might look like anymore. What they might have looked like when he was a boy, or before he was born.

"What about these people?" Steve shows him a second picture, of a little boy being pushed on a swing by an older blonde woman.

"That's me," Tony says, pointing to the boy. "Is that my mom?"

"Yeah," Steve says. "You remember your mom?"

Tony nods. "She used to sing to me at bedtime, when she was around. Sometimes Ana would, instead. Ana and Jarvis did a lot of the parenting for mom. She was busy, being my dad's wife. She didn't always have time to be my mom."

Steve nods sadly. "You were lonely a lot, huh?"

Tony shakes his head, taking the photo from Steve's hand and touching his mother's face gently. "Nah, I was just deeply unhappy. Hey," he looks up at Steve. "Remind me. How did my mom die? I can't remember."

Steve, to his credit, doesn't cry.

* * *

"What do you remember?" Pepper asks, her voice gentle. She's been by Tony's bed for almost an hour, her deft words reaching in and prying him open, getting him to show her where his gaps are.

Tony's eyes are closed. "I remember that I was dying," he says, sounding young and far away. "I remember giving you the company, and Rhodey the suit, and sitting in a donut until Nick Fury yelled at me. I remember that I was being poisoned."

"Good," Pepper says, stroking his forearm gently. Something prickles at the back of Steve's neck, and he wonders if it's jealousy for their bond, or jealousy that he isn't the one whose touch offers comfort.

"And I found a new element. In the basement," Tony says. "The Malibu house. I found it."

"How?" Pepper prompts, gently.

Tony shakes his head. "I just-- I just _did_ it."

It's not the right answer, Steve knows that. He wasn't there, he wasn't even defrosted yet when it was happening. But he knows, everyone knows, about the secret Howard left in the model. 

"Tony," he says, trying to match Pepper's calm although he knows that he doesn't have it down as well as she does. "What was your father's name?"

Tony sits up, meeting Steve's eyes calmly, without any guile. "You know," he says softly. "I don't think I ever knew my dad."

"Right," Steve says, inching forward in his seat, leaning in like he might break through. "But what was his name?"

Tony's brow furrows for a moment, and he then surprises them both by standing suddenly. "I'm done here," Tony says, his voice oddly jovial as he reaches out to steady himself.

"What?" Pepper looks taken aback, but she stands and offers Tony her arm.

"I don't want to be in a hospital anymore," he says. "Get my pants."

The harshness of Tony's voice causes Pepper to almost start, like it's taken her off guard. "Tony," she says, her voice a soft warning. "Have you forgotten how to ask for things, too? Or are you just being an ass?"

"Look," Tony snaps. "You want me to say please? Please. Please get me my pants so I can go the hell home."

"You can't go home," Steve says, finally standing to match them.

"Like hell I can't," Tony growls. "If I'm gonna die, then I'm gonna die with pants on, in my own bed."

This is the most animated Tony has been since they tried with Vision, since he thought he had found himself a cure. Steve doesn't even know how long it's been-- a few days? A week? It feels like a lifetime of sleeping in plastic chairs and drinking tepid coffee while Tony wastes away in front of him. 

Steve looks at Pepper, who is doing her best to maintain a neutral balance. She meets his eyes and shakes her head almost imperceptibly. They both know it's getting worse, and it's getting faster. What was a slow and creeping process is now a tidal wave, a looming shadow ready to break. 

And if Tony wants to ride it out in a place he at least feels comfortable, then who is Steve to stop him? He thinks he would have given just about anything to die in a place that wasn't a plane in the arctic.

He opens the closet and he gets Tony his clothes. They're going home.

* * *

Tony's bedroom in the compound becomes a makeshift medical ward, but as his memory wanes, so does his patience with being doted on. He can't seem to remember that he's forgetting things anymore, and gets annoyed at questions.

Pepper and Rhodey and Steve take turns caring for him. Others drop in; Vision and Peter Parker specifically take turns at Tony's bedside. But mostly they're keeping it quiet. No one can think of something Tony would want less than news of his demise getting out in the press. It's a small miracle (and a tiny dent in Tony's bank account) that the hospital kept it quiet as long as they did.

They still don't know what caused it, what kind of magic or science or infinity gem reached into the ether and pulled out those specific words to paint over Tony's memory. Steve despairs thinking that they never will. Maybe it's a side effect of the serum; maybe the same thing that's overwriting Tony's memory is what kept Bucky alive in the snow under the train. His own stubbornness and guilt and regret magnified and fractalized through the fabric of reality to make the things he believed-- the things he truly wanted and needed-- happen.

Or maybe it was just dumb fucking luck, the wrong words said at the wrong time and overheard by the wrong person-demon-being and brought into horrifying reality.

It didn't matter what was causing it, in the end. What mattered, what really and truly mattered, was that they couldn't seem to fix it.

* * *

Calling in Helen Cho is a last resort kind of idea, a moment of desperation that came up one night as Rhodey and Pepper and Steve tried to get as drunk as possible to forget that Vision was in with Tony, pulling at his brain with some kind of mental crowbar, trying to open the memories back up and let the light in.

Not that Steve can get drunk, but god, he tries.

* * *

Cho shows up on a redeye from Korea, a machine in tow that looks like something from Torquemada's worst nightmares. Rhodey shivers at the idea of loading Tony into it.

"Will it hurt?" he asks, watching her adjust settings and fiddle with dials as she sets it up.

"For you, or for him?" Cho asks, and Rhodey wonders-- not for the first time-- if she has a machine that reads minds tucked away somewhere.

"For him," Rhodey says, instead of the truth.

Cho shrugs. "It may. It's not going to be very pleasant. But the last thing I intend to do is damage Tony Stark."

Rhodey nods. He gets that. A lot of people seem to have that attitude recently, but it's ringing pretty hollow. 

"What do you call this machine?" he asks. 

She smiles at him. "We were thinking of The Fountain. The idea is that it helps reduce the effects of aging on brain cells-- restoring memory loss and working as a treatment for dementia and other types of degenerative neural conditions."

It's almost funny, Rhodey almost laughs. "The Fountain of Youth, then?"

Cho shrugs and turns her attention back to the machine, but he sees the wry smile on her lips as she does. She's amused at herself. "Why not? The one that grew new people was called the cradle and no one had anything to say about it."

Rhodey shakes his head, but doesn't protest as he settles in to wait for the treatment to begin.

* * *

Cho's treatments are exhausting, and Vision's attempts to clear the debris in Tony's mind are painful. They can't find Wanda, and a rumor about a magician in New York City who could maybe help proves too hard to track down. Steve even reaches out to T'Challa in Wakanda, but the communication lines have been unreliable since their country went public, and none of the royal family can be reached to help.

Rhodey thinks that maybe if they could get in touch with Thor, get Tony to one of the Asgardian healing chambers, they might have a chance, but no one knows how to call him.

"I'm done," Tony says, softly, his brow dripping sweat as he makes his way back to his room with Pepper after one of Cho's sessions.

Pepper nods absently. "Done with what?"

"The treatments," he says. His voice is hoarse and she knows it's from the pain he's been going through. They do what they can with drugs and Vision tries to adjust Tony's perceptions, but it doesn't always help, and he's in pain more often than not. "I don't want to do them anymore."

"Okay," Pepper says, helping him into bed. His words feel like a weight on her shoulders, a cold brand on her skin. He's giving up, and she thinks that the worst thing she could do would be to tell him not to. 

"You're one of the good ones," he says, his voice starting to fade as the exhaustion takes him against his will.

Pepper kisses his forehead gently, and takes a seat in the armchair by his bed. She remembers her father, and how he used to go to the funeral home when she was a little girl and perform _Shemira_ , sitting with dead bodies for hours to make sure they were not alone. It chills her to think that she's sitting with someone who is just waiting to die, the same way her father tended corpses so the souls would have comfort in their time of transition. 

Pepper picks up her tablet and opens the book she's been reading on the nights she spends with Tony; the kind of nothing book you pick up in an airport gift shop on your way to a beach. Something ephemeral, light and fleeting. She clears her throat, and starts to read aloud.

* * *

Steve's favorite thing to do, when it's his turn to tend to Tony, is to sit outside on the balcony of his room. It's starting to get chilly, fall just beginning to nip at the edges of leaves, and it reminds Steve of better days.

They're out there, two weeks after leaving the hospital, when Steve feels the hope for a recovery leave him completely.

"Hey," Tony smiles at Steve, who feels his heart flutter slightly. There aren't a lot of smiles these days, just annoyed snapping at people who are only trying to help.

"Yeah, Tony?" Steve returns the smile. Good things aren't to be wasted.

"Are we on a date?" Tony actually looks slightly shy as he asks it, like he's half-hoping the answer is yes.

Steve shakes his head. "No, we came out for air," he says. "Why, do you want this to be a date?"

Tony's shug is downright nonchalant. A theatrical way of showing Steve that he couldn't care less what the answer really was. 

"No," he says, staring off at the tree line. "I was just thinking how rude I would be to go on a date with you and not know your name."

The world stops, and the cold sinks in to Steve's skin. This is the end, then. All the things he's ever done to hurt Tony are gone, and he's been forgotten. It's all he can do to stand slowly, and not run off.

"I'm going to get Pepper," he says, keeping his calm as best he can.

Tony shrugs again. "Okay."

Steve leaves, and manages to keep the first sob inaudible, not making a sound until the door of Tony's room is tightly closed behind him and he can melt down in the hallway.

* * *

Tony is fighting Rhodey on a gray Wednesday, their shouts echoing down the hallways as Steve approaches Tony's room.

"I have a test!" Tony is yelling as Steve cracks open the door. "I can't fucking flunk quantum entanglement theory or my dad isn't going to pay for next semester."

"Rhodes?" Steve says, and Rhodey waves him in.

"Tony," Rhodey says evenly. "Your test was like 40 years ago. I promise."

Tony throws up his hands in frustration and sinks back onto the bed like a deflating balloon. "If I fail--" he starts, and Rhodey just rolls his eyes and turns to Steve.

"I gave him 2 mg of haldol," Rhodey says softly. "About ten minutes ago. He should be down for the count soon. You good to stay overnight?"

Steve nods and gives a thumbs up, showing Rhodey the shiny new Kindle he's carrying. "I'm good for babysitting."

Rhodey gives a weary smile. "Am I expected to pay for pizza?"

Steve shakes his head. "Go have a relaxing night. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Thanks," Rhodey claps Steve on the shoulder. He looks exhausted, he looks about seventeen years older than he did when Steve got off the plane a month and a half ago. This is taking a toll on all of them, Steve thinks. 

He opens his mouth to say something, to ask Rhodey if he's alright, but of course he's not. How could he be? How could any of them be?

"Hey," Steve says, following Rhodey to the door.

"Yeah?"

Steve smiles, waiting for Rhodes to turn back and look at him. When he finally does, Steve speaks in hushed tones, trying to make sure not to upset Tony any further. "This fucking sucks. But you know how much Tony loves you, right?"

Rhodes nods. "I love him, too."

"I won't let him go," Steve promises. "Not tonight. Not until you've said your goodbyes, okay?"

Rhodey wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand and shakes his head sadly. "He's ready," he says, not even trying to keep the bone-aching sorrow out of his voice. "Don't stop him for me. I never wanted to hold him back before, and I'm not starting now."

Steve covers the distance between them quickly, and wraps his arms around Rhodes, pulling him close.

"I'm sorry," Steve says. "For all of it."

"Hey," Rhodey laughs awkwardly, but doesn't pull away. "Don't tell me, man. Tell him."

* * *

Tony wakes to a strange noise in the dark. It's not the kind of dark he prefers, an inky blackness that lets his mind zone as he works without sensation. This is more of a half-light, a breaking dawn in his room. Someone put him here and didn't close his curtains. He would never leave the curtains open.

A man sleeps in the room, but not in the bed. He's handsome, and blond and broad-shouldered. He's slumped in an armchair that should be in the living room but is somehow next to Tony's bed, his head tilted forward onto his chest. He looks like a classical statue, like a sleeping Adonis that you would find in the Louvre, ignored by the people who don't know why they've come to see the Mona Lisa.

Tony shifts, reaching for the water glass he sees on the bedside table, and the man rouses.

"Sorry," Tony says. "I didn't mean to wake you."

The man smiles, and he's handsome in wakefulness, too. His eyes are dark and worried, but they don't take away from the genetic miracle that is the sculpt of his face.

"It's okay," he says, smiling weakly. Tony is smitten with this person, whoever he is.

"Are you the doctor?" Tony asks.

It's like dropping a bomb, like exploding a landmine into this perfect man's world. He seems to crumple from within for a moment, seems to implode with the force of the question.

"No," he says. "I'm Steve Rogers."

Tony things for a moment. He knows that name, though he doesn't know why. It's a familiar sound.

"I'm sorry," Tony says. "I'm terrible with faces--"

Rogers looks like he might cry, like he's on the verge of a major emotional meltdown that will be uncomfortable and loud and confusing for both of them. Tony offers him the water.

Rogers takes it and drinks for a moment. "Tony," he says, setting the glass down. "Do you know why I'm here?"

"You were sleeping," Tony says. "I assume we're having some kind of sexy slumber party? Though, why you chose to sleep in a chair when this big beautiful bed is right here with a handsome billionaire in it is beyond me."

The smile that Rogers offers is broken, jagged. It doesn't manage to conceal the pain that he's in. 

"I owe you--" Rogers shakes his head, taking a deep breath and running a hand through his hair. "I owe you an apology. And the truth. I knew. I knew it would hurt you when you found out, and I knew you'd find out. I knew not signing was the end of the team. I knew."

Tony blinks. "I'm sorry," he says again. "What are you talking about?"

Rogers nods curtly begins at the beginning. "You're Iron Man," he says. "And I'm Captain America. We are-- we were teammates. Avengers. We saved the world. At least twice, maybe three times. I don't know, it's hard to say."

Tony opens his mouth to interrupt, but Steve holds up a hand.

"Let me-- just let me do this, please?" He closes his eyes. "It's a long story, Tony. Your dad created me. I got frozen in the arctic. We fought aliens and we fought gods and we fought each other. We-- the world didn't like that we were unsupervised, which-- we were doing good. We were trying. They put together rules to govern us, to say that we should only act in certain ways." 

Rogers sits forward in the chair, his elbows resting on his knees and his head hanging as though he's afraid to look at Tony. "I-- someone important to me died just then, and I chose not to sign. And because-- because I can never just have a day, never get to put on my sweats and watch TV, the UN got bombed. Do you remember that? The UN?"

Tony tries, but he doesn't think he can conjure the moment Rogers is talking about. There are explosions, he does know that. He just doesn't know where or when.

"Long story short,: Rogers continues. "My best friend was being framed. And I had to help him, even though it was against the law. It got-- it always gets messy. Always, with us. Always on the edge of something, me and you."

"Bucky," Tony says, the name coming to him like a static shock. Rogers looks up at him and waits a moment, but when Tony doesn't say anything else, he continues.

"Yeah, Bucky. And then we fought. You and me, and our friends. Like we were willing to kill each other. People got hurt. Rhodey got hurt. People who tried to help me ended up in jail, and I ended up in Siberia, trying to stop a madman from waking up some super soldiers."

Tony nods. "They were dead, though."

Rogers inhales sharply. "Yeah," he says. "Do you remember why?"

Tony tries again, and he can see a face with shaggy dark hair-- two faces, actually-- but no names. "No."

"That's okay," Rogers reaches out and takes his hand, the touch warm and comforting and homey to Tony. "A man was trying to hurt us. Zemo. He showed you that my friend murdered your parents. And I knew. I knew, and I never told you. Because I was trying to protect you, and protect the team, and a hundred thousand other stupid reasons because I should have told you. I should have."

Tony can see it, the old Soviet complex and the grainy TV footage. The fight, being left bruised and bloodied on the floor, Steve's shield next to him.

"I tried to kill Bucky," Tony says, very slowly.

"Yeah," Steve says. "You didn't, though. You-- I had to hurt you. More. Physically. To stop you from killing him."

Tony feels the first tear track down his cheek, hot and unwanted. "Fuck you, Steve."

Rogers catches his breath. "Do you-- Tony, do you know what I'm talking about?"

The tears continue, and Tony's chest heaves suddenly with an unwelcome sob as the memories flood in. "Fuck you," he says again, but he can hear how empty it is, how hollow and childlike and tinged with pain. 

Steve nods. "That's fair. I'm sorry. I really am."

"I thought--" Tony remembers now; he sees it as clear as day and it blinds him. The whole of his relationship with Steve, going back years before they ever met. "My whole life, I played second fiddle to you. To Captain America. My dad's first son, his perfect son. I could never be half of what you were. And then I met you. In _Germany_ of all places. And I thought-- I thought that this was my chance. This was where I would prove that I was as good as you. Better. But you-- it's impossible to win a game that you're playing alone. You wouldn't compete with me. You were on my team. You weren't my dad's perfect son; you were my brother."

Steve squeezes Tony's hand gently. "Is that what I was?" he asks, after a long moment of prolonged eye contact.

Tony feels his cheeks flush. "What else would you be? What else-- what else did you want to be?"

"I don't know," Steve says, and he looks downright shy. "I thought there was something else. There could have been something else."

"Like what?" Tony says, suddenly feeling afraid in a different way. It's not the creeping dread that's been stalking him for months now, it's a fear of the future. A fear of what the next few minutes will mean for the next few years.

"Like--" Steve laughs as he laces their fingers together, his thumb rubbing a burningly intimate path across the back of Tony's hand. "I don't know, Tony. Like love or something."

That was not what Tony was expecting. Maybe what he was hoping for, but not what he was expecting. "What?"

Steve looks momentarily dejected, but he shrugs it off and smiles his hollow smile again. "I don't know, maybe I love you."

"Is that why you lied to me?" asks Tony. It's a low blow, it's a cheap shot. But Steve has earned it, he thinks. All that he's been through, all that they've put each other through for the past year.

"I thought I was protecting you," Steve says, and Tony believes him. If there's one thing that will be eternally true of Steven Grant Rogers, it's his burning desire to protect everyone from everything, whether they like it or not. "I never-- Tony, fuck. I had to go to Bucky in Romania. I wasn't choosing him over you. I never was. They were going to kill him-- or he was going to kill them. And neither of those was a choice I was okay with."

Tony nods. He can understand that, the lack of choice. "And the airport?" he asks, because there's still a lot to unpack there.

"I tried to tell you," Steve says. "You sicced a twelve-year-old on me."

"He isn't twelve," Tony smiles, his first feeling of actual mirth at the absurdity of this whole endeavor. "And I wasn't-- fuck. I'm sorry, too. Believe it or not, Cap, I was trying to protect you, too."

"I believe it," Steve says. "You're more noble than you want anyone to know."

Tony actually laughs at that. "That's slander."

"You know," Steve says, his voice naked and raw. "I said I love you."

"You did," Tony agrees. "What should we do about that?"

Steve rolls his eyes, and leans in, pressing his lips to Tony's. It's a small moment, but it's everything, too. Tony reaches up and wraps an arm around Steve's neck, pulling him closer, down onto the bed with him. Steve kisses like he's been drowning and this is air, like he's been wanting to do this for a very long time. Tony can't lie to himself, not in the moment. He's been waiting, too. Wanting. Since before he can really remember.

"Hey," Tony says, when they finally have to come up for air and Steve rests his forehead against Tony's, his eyes closed as if in prayer.

"Yeah?" Steve says, smiling like a sunrise.

"I'm pretty sure I'm gonna remember this part," Tony says, touching Steve's cheek gently.

Steve laughs and turns to kiss Tony's fingertips. "Please," he says. "Like I'm gonna let you forget."

* * *

The sun brightens the room by degrees, rays creeping across the floor until they lay across Tony's eyes. He blinks awake, trying to orient himself.

His arm is numb, which is probably caused by the man in bed with him, a beautiful blond with his head pillowed on Tony's shoulder. He's angelic in sleep, Tony thinks.

Tony smiles and kisses his forehead. "Wake up," he says softly.

His bedmate opens his eyes and smiles up into his face. "I fell asleep," he says.

"Yeah," Tony nods. "Me too."

"What do you remember about last night?" the other man asks, his smile wavering at the edges.

Tony thinks for a moment before returning the smile. "I remember that you love me."

Steve laughs and kisses Tony's smart mouth. "What else?"

Tony shakes his head. "Steve," he says, unable to keep the happiness from his voice. "I remember _everything_."


End file.
